Dr. Michael Grandner and I discuss the perils of self-diagnosis and untreated sleeping disorders. Grandner also touches on the ins and outs of the current benefits and limitations of sleep trackers on the market. Dr. Michael explains the six ingredients for healthy behavior change and effective ways to break barriers to sleep. He also breaks down precisely when it's time for to visit a Sleep Physician or a Sleep Behavioural Specialist. If you’re into sleep tracking —what these devices can measure...and what they can’t, and many more insights into your sleep health, get comfortable and dive into this podcast.
Dr. Michael Grandner and I discuss the perils of self-diagnosis and untreated sleeping disorders. Grandner also touches on the ins and outs of the current benefits and limitations of sleep trackers on the market.
Dr. Michael explains the six ingredients for healthy behavior change and effective ways to break barriers to sleep. He also breaks down precisely when it's time to visit a Sleep Physician or a Sleep Behavioural Specialist.
If you’re into sleep tracking —what these devices can measure...and what they can’t, and many more insights into your sleep health, get comfortable and dive into this podcast.
GUEST BIO:
Dr. Grandner is the Director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona, Director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Clinic at the Banner-University Medical Center, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the UA College of Medicine, with joint appointments in the Departments of Medicine, Psychology (UA College of Science), Nutritional Sciences (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences), and Clinical Translational Science. In addition, he is a faculty member of the Neuroscience and Physiological Sciences Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs. He is certified in Behavioral Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Sleep Medicine and is a Diplomate in Behavioral Sleep Medicine by the Board of Behavioral Sleep Medicine.
His research focuses on how sleep and sleep-related behaviors are related to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, neurocognitive functioning, mental health, and longevity. He has given hundreds of lectures and presentations on topics related to sleep and health, and he is frequently sought as an expert on sleep-related issues.
He has published over 175 articles and chapters on issues relating to sleep and health, and his work has been cited over 8,000 times. He is associate editor of the journal Sleep Health. He serves on the editorial boards of the journals SLEEP, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, Sleep Medicine, Behavioral Sleep Medicine, Journal of Sleep Research, Frontiers in Neurology: Sleep and Circadian Rhythms, Sleep Advances, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, and other journals. He has served on both the Mental Health Task Force and Interassociation Taskforce for Sleep and Wellness for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the Mental Health consensus committee for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and works to help improve sleep and performance in professional and non-professional athletes. He is a regular consultant on the topic of sleep health for organizations across the health, technology, and nutritional industries. He is a regular speaker on topics related to sleep and health for students, patients, corporations, and athletes, and has been invited multiple times to the National Institutes of Health, has served as an expert witness for civil, county, and federal cases, and has discussed issues related to sleep health at briefings for the US Congress.
EPISODE SUMMARY:
💤 Difference between difficulty sleeping and a sleep disorder
💤 Behavioral Sleep Specialists vs Sleep Physicians
💤 Warnings about self-diagnosis through Dr. Google when dealing with sleep problems
💤 The truth about stimulus control
💤 The two significant factors that make it hard to get to sleep
💤 Six ingredients for someone to make a healthy behavior change
💤 How we can adequately utilize sleep tracker and sleep metrics
💤 We must promote self-efficacy, helping people know both that they CAN improve their sleep along with the HOW
💤 Why having a regular bedtime helps make wake-up time reliable
💤 What has been Dr. Grandner's biggest change to his sleep game
And more!
GUEST BIO:
Dr. Grandner is the Director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona, Director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Clinic at the Banner-University Medical Center, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the UA College of Medicine, with joint appointments in the Departments of Medicine, Psychology (UA College of Science), Nutritional Sciences (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences), and Clinical Translational Science. In addition, he is a faculty member of the Neuroscience and Physiological Sciences Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs. He is certified in Behavioral Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Sleep Medicine and is a Diplomate in Behavioral Sleep Medicine by the Board of Behavioral Sleep Medicine.
His research focuses on how sleep and sleep-related behaviors are related to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, neurocognitive functioning, mental health, and longevity. He has given hundreds of lectures and presentations on topics related to sleep and health, and he is frequently sought as an expert on sleep-related issues.
He has published over 175 articles and chapters on issues relating to sleep and health, and his work has been cited over 8,000 times. He is associate editor of the journal Sleep Health. He serves on the editorial boards of the journals SLEEP, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, Sleep Medicine, Behavioral Sleep Medicine, Journal of Sleep Research, Frontiers in Neurology: Sleep and Circadian Rhythms, Sleep Advances, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, and other journals. He has served on both the Mental Health Task Force and Interassociation Taskforce for Sleep and Wellness for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the Mental Health consensus committee for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and works to help improve sleep and performance in professional and non-professional athletes. He is a regular consultant on the topic of sleep health for organizations across the health, technology, and nutritional industries. He is a regular speaker on topics related to sleep and health for students, patients, corporations, and athletes, and has been invited multiple times to the National Institutes of Health, has served as an expert witness for civil, county, and federal cases, and has discussed issues related to sleep health at briefings for the US Congress.
EPISODE LINKS:
Website: https://www.michaelgrandner.com/
Instagram: @michaelgrandner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelgrandner
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grandner/
Welcome to the sleep is a skilled podcast. My name is Molly McLaughlin, and I own a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. Each week I'll be interviewing world class experts ranging from doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper.
Let's jump into your dose of practical sleep training.
Welcome to the sleep is a skilled podcast. My guest today is Dr. Michael Grandner and this is a big honor for me to have him on this podcast. I'm actually gonna struggle on to how to introduce him. It is so wild, the accomplishments that he has in the realm of. So I'm gonna try my best to read just some of the things that he's accomplished, but it is lengthy.
So just buckle in for a second, because you are about to hear about someone who has done a ton in the realm of sleep. Uh, a little bit about Dr. Michael Grandner. He is the director of the sleep and health research program at the University of Arizona director of the behavioral sleep medicine clinic at the banner University Medical Center and an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the UA college of medicine with joint appointments in the departments of medicine, psych.
UA college of science, nutritional science, college of agriculture and life sciences and clinical translational science. In addition, he is a faculty member of the neuroscience and the physiological sciences graduate interdisciplinary programs. He is certified in behavioral sleep medicine by the American board of sleep medicine and is a diplomat in behavioral sleep medicine by the board of behavioral sleep medicine.
His research focuses on how sleep and sleep related behaviors are related to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, neurocognitive, functioning, mental health, and longevity, current and recently completed research projects were funded by the national Institute of minority health and health disparities.
The national Institute of drug abuse, the national heart lung and blood Institute, the national Institute of environmental health sciences, the American health association and national collegiate athletics association and other associations. And here's a part I really wanna highlight. He has published over 175 articles and chapters on issues relating to sleep and health.
And his work has been cited over 8,000 times. He is an associate editor of the journal, sleep health and serves on the editorial boards. Of the journal sleep journal of clinical sleep medicine, sleep medicine, behavioral sleep medicine, journal of sleep research, frontiers in neurology, sleep and circadian rhythm and other journals.
And this is just a little bit about Dr. Michael Grandner. One of the things I think you're gonna like about this podcast is that Dr. Michael Grandner really is committed to ensuring that this conversation around. Ripples into society in a way that just makes it useful and applicable to the masses that you can really hear his commitment and mission behind the information that we get into today.
So buckle up. I think you're gonna enjoy this conversation. All right. You all, I'm so excited to announce our new sponsor soul C B D. When I was at my lowest point, dealing with my insomnia, C B D was one of the key compounds that I lead into to combat my crippling anxiety, calm my nervous system and support my journey to entrain my circadian rhythm.
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For instance, I love that soul CBD supports a nighttime bath routine with their CBD bath bombs, which help to combat stress sooth, aching muscles with a mix of CBD, essential oils and dead sea salts. I. Another ritual that we aim to cultivate in the realm of sleep optimization is CI rhythm intermittent fasting, which is really all about eating your meals between sunrise and sunset and soul C B D has very popular gummies that can serve as a nighttime.
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All right, let's get onto the show. And welcome to the sleep is a skilled podcast. I could not be more excited. I know I say this a lot, but I really could not be more excited with this guest. I mean, I am, it is not lost on me. The privilege that it is to have. Michael Grandner on our podcast today of such a wealth of information.
My main struggle today, uh, full disclosure is to not take up too much of his time and how to actually jam as much practical takeaways as we possibly can from this human being that has a ton of information. So really thank you for taking the time to be here. No, thank you for having me. I'm super excited.
Ah, this is gonna be great. I know before we hit record, we were discussing some of the places that we could go and how to navigate this. And, you know, we landed on, I think a couple things. And of course, if other things come up feel free, but couple things that we've kind of discovered, or that we've spoke to.
Since we've been running this podcast and this company sleep is a skill and the newsletters and all the things we've started to discover that there's about seems to be two groups of people that are listening or reading this content. And it seems to be people that one either are Googling stuff, and they're saying help.
I can't sleep. I need to fill in the blank. I need support here. I need whatever. They want the help now. And then there's this other group that's more in the realm of kind of biohackers or optimizers and they are, they're sleeping. They're, you know, there there's some workability, but they wanna optimize.
So what we'd love to do in this conversation today is have you help us navigate those two groups? And I think first off. The Googling people, what can we do for the Googling people when it comes to sleep, sleep deprivation, insomnia, you know? Yeah. Take it away. Yeah. I mean, well, so the first thing I wanna say yes is that there's a difference between.
Difficulty sleeping and, and having some sleep problems and having a sleep disorder, a sleep disorder is a medical condition that you can get diagnosed with and there's treatments for. And if you've got a sleep disorder, it's unlikely that any of the stuff you're Googling any of the tips you're finding are gonna fix that problem.
It's like, A lot of these tips are, are good things to do. They're things that people should do that would make it more likely that you're gonna set your sleep up for success or remove barriers to sleep, whatever they are. And I'm not even gonna go into all them because they're easy enough to find. But the point is, these are all good habits.
But, you know, it's like brushing your teeth is a good habit. Everyone should be doing it. It'll help in lots of ways. It prevents problems. It can fix problems. You can't brush your way out of braces. Mm. If you, if you need braces, you gotta go to an orthodontist. You can't, there's no dental tips. And how do I brush better?
What toothpaste should I use? What toothbrush should I use? None of those questions are gonna fix your problem. And so if you have a sleep disorder, you need to go to a sleep specialist. And if you're not sure if you have a sleep disorder, Get evaluated. I mean, worst case scenario, the answer's no. And then you go to the sleep tips if the answer's yes.
There's solutions. So there's actually two kinds of sleep specialists. A lot of people don't know this, actually, a lot of doctors don't know this, so this is good to. First are what are called sleep physicians. So these are medical doctors with a specialty in sleep. Most of what they do is sleep apnea.
They do a lot of the overnight studies, but they do a lot of other stuff too. They're able to treat a wide range of sleep disorders and help diagnose them. And then there's also what are called behavioral sleep specialists. So these are mostly psychologists and other people with, with behavioral and mental health training, they tend to focus more on, in.
Which is not what the physicians do as much of they focus more on the insomnia. They, again, they treat like the wide range of sleep disorders as well. But if you've got more of an insomnia problem, seek out a behavioral sleep specialist, if you've got more of a medical problem, or you're not sure they sleep out a sleep sleep physician, and you can get referrals from them in your town, wherever you live, their directories.
And I can give you some of those legs just posted. So first of all, can evaluate and treated. Um, most of the treatments actually don't hurt. Most of the tests don't require blood draws. I mean, if you have insomnia, if it's taking you more than a half, an hour to fall asleep, or you're awake for more than a half an hour during the night trying to sleep, and this is happening for at least three months, and it's going on at least three nights a week, and it's causing you daytime problems get treated for insomnia.
A lot of people don't know that actually. Most recommended treatment for insomnia is a non-medication behavioral therapy called C B T I, that you can Google it's shockingly effective and you don't need medications. Some people do benefit for medications, but if you don't want to take medications, just know there are other options out there.
Same thing with sleep AA, super common, but the more we look in the population, the more we're finding it. And it can be associated with, with loud snoring at night, difficulty breathing at night, waking up and feeling exhausted during the day. And it can be treated either with a C P a mask, but there's also like a mouth guard can wear at night.
There's all kinds of other things, just new medications you've been coming out for it. Other sleep disorders like restless legs. There's hypersomnia disorders, which are the opposite of insomnia, where hypersomnia means you have really a hard time staying awake during the day. All of these have treatments out there.
You don't have to suffer alone. I know I'm harping on this a little bit, but this is important. If you've got a sleep disorder, just get taken care of by a professional don't, don't stumble through the jungle of sleep tips on your own. You may end up just binding yourself, tangled in the weeds. So that's the first thing I wanted to.
The other thing I want to say is about all this sleep tips you're Googling. It's sometimes I think from my perspective, look, I've been in this field for a long time and I don't think it's about the one specific tip that unlocks whatever. Mm-hmm, a lot of these tips all come from similar places. They're all variations on relatively common themes.
I mean, it's like with diet, eat less, move more. More natural stuff, less processed stuff, more fruits and vegetables. All of that, you know, this is a lot of the diet tips are along those same lines and there are different variations on that theme. And so if you see similar things, because it's about the underlying principle and it's not about the specific tip, it's about how to get you to do the thing that will help set you up for success.
So one of these underlying principles that I think gets ignored a little bit is actually something that happens while you're in. It's called stimulus control. It's an idea that came out at back in the 1970s. It's so shockingly, helpful for sleep. This alone can sometimes be used instead of a sleeping pill in terms of getting people to sleep.
The only thing is it doesn't work tonight. What stimulus control is it's a learning process. It's a training process for your brain and what you, the, the idea behind stimulus control is if you're in a place. And there's only one thing that happens in that place that place can get you in that zone really easily.
So like for, for a lot of people, it's like going to the gym. Even if you're tired, even if you're hungry, even if you're kind of stressed, once you get there, you can get all the way through your workout because you don't do anything else there. That place helps you get in that zone. Another example on the other side of the spectrum is the dentist chair.
You're in the dentist chair. Nothing's happened to you yet. You're already sort of amped up and stressed and uncomfortable. Like you're in the waiting room. You're already sort of in a bad mood. I mean, you're in the car on the way over there. You're already kind of in, you're avoiding making the call to schedule the appointment.
Because that place is so thoroughly tied with an experience that you can put yourself in that zone. Just thinking about it. Mm-hmm so a place has the ability to do that. What we want is we want the bed to be like the gym, or you get in the zone to do the thing you wanna do, as opposed to the dentist chair, or whenever you're there even thinking about it, it makes you stressed and anxious and gets in the way.
And so to do that, we need to make it so the bed becomes the place where you sleep so reliably without thinking about it. Your brain knows that the bed equals sleep. There are two problems that, that people usually have to overcome, and there's a million tips to solve them. But really the two problems are this.
Number one, if you're doing too many different things in bed, you're diluting the ability of the bed to give you that signal. It's like going to the gym, you work out there. You're not gonna eat your lunch there. You're not gonna socialize there. You're not working there. You're not doing your taxes there.
You're not seeing your dentist at the gym. You're not doing stressful things that you're doing. Just one set of things there, the more things that happen there, the less ability the place has to trigger that response. So in bed, that means get stuff out of bed. If it's not helpful to sleep, even if it's not sleep, even if it's helping you.
Relax in a chair, relax somewhere else. Make bed, be the unconsciousness place, make bed, be the sleep place. The other problem is sometimes the bed becomes the dentist chair and sleep becomes so predictably stressful. That you know, your brain is a pattern recognition machine. It knows that sleep is coming.
Bedtime's coming off. Am I, is this gonna happen? Am I gonna fall asleep or maybe I'll fall asleep. Fine. But if am I gonna wake up and am I not gonna be able to get back to sleep? Those worries exist, whether you perceive them or not, because they're, they're predictable. Once they become predictable, you have to get that predictable stress out of bed.
And if you're gonna make the bed equals. You can control the bedside of the equation, even if you can't control the sleep side of the equation. So what that means is if you are in bed and sleep, isn't imminent, or you're frustrated that you're not sleeping or you're, you're thinking, and you're worrying those aren't compatible with sleep.
Get out out of bed. I'm not saying, I mean, some people say get up for a half an hour or an hour, or until you feel sleepy or whatever. I don't care. Get out until sleep is potentially imminent. Some people, to be honest, they just need like a two minute reset. Yeah. They like get up like walk around a little bit, maybe go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, whatever it is they do.
Yeah. And then just get back. And this is like a change of scenery. Sometimes it's all it takes. Sometimes people need more time to just clear out that stuff. If you're not gonna be able to fall asleep anyway, it's like sitting down at the dinner table and your food's there and you're just like, you can't.
Sitting there staring at your food for an hour is not gonna make you hungry. And not only that, if you, this becomes reliable, you're gonna hate dinner. Time, dinner time is gonna be just a stressful thing. And so you want dinner time to be a nice experience. So like if you're sitting there and you're stressed and you can each get up.
Like don't sit there and stare at your food for an hour. Same thing if your, with the bed. So anyway, so that's stimulus control and that's the core of a lot of these recommendations. It's you want the bed to equal sleep as reliably and predictably as possible. So remove the other things that bed's predicting and distill it to just sleep.
And the other thing, a lot of these tips are all around bedtime routines. Sure. Do this. Don't do this. Pick this up, put this down really. The point is this. If I have someone who comes in and says I get into bed and I just can't turn my mind. Or like, I can't, my brain just won't slow down or like, I get into bed, it's taking you a while.
And I think, okay. Often they're like, well, I'm just a very mentally active person. Like we're all mentally active people, you know, nothing like, you know, no effects, but like we, you know, we're in our society. It's like, like when students say, oh, I didn't want to bother you. You're too busy. I'm like, well, you're busy.
We're all busy. Like in our society, everyone's busy. If you're not busy, like I've got stuff for you to do. Yeah. It's not about your mind. Everyone's mind is why is it active in bed? To me, that's like, Drive in my car and I wanna stop at this stop sign. I want to be stopped there, but I'm in the intersection.
It just keeps going. And I just can't get it to slow down and stop until it's too late. And I'm in the middle of the road. And so I'll say, all right, when did you start tapping your brakes and slowing down? And they're like, well, two millimeters before the stop sign . And so I'm like, okay, well, there's nothing wrong with your brakes.
There's nothing wrong with your car. The stop sign. Didn't come too soon. There's nothing wrong with the. You just need to start slowing down a little more gradually and a little sooner because the brain is not a light switch. It's not, we can't just turn it on and turn it off. If we're going and we're going and we're going.
It takes time for it to be ready to let go of these things in process. And if you don't do it before you get into bed, sometimes when people get into bed, that's the first opportunity they have where their mind says, oh, you're not distracted anymore. Now I have your attention. Well, here's our list of things that are on your mind that you're thinking about that you're worried about, that you need to plan for.
Cause I didn't have your attention before, but I've got it now. well, if that's gonna happen. Budget for it plan for that time. Does that mean you have to put your screen down an hour before bed? No. You wanna put your screen down early enough that it's not serving as a distraction, keeping you up unnecessarily or prolonging your wake time or making yourself so distracted, but mentally here, you, you hit pause on all the other stuff and then you put it down in it on pauses.
Some people can process things while they're watching something or scrolling some people can't, I would say. Do what you need to do so that by the time you get into bed, you're ready and that's, what's really important. All these other tips are just potential ways to do that. Mm, absolutely. And one of the things we discussed before we hit record is the tendency for people to want the specific prescription for these things.
And so certainly in lieu of doing that, cuz we know that that's not gonna be serving anyone. Sara at all. And I really appreciate you speaking to kind of this range and, and maybe it will change for the particular individual throughout their course of their life. They might have a particularly stressful time, like an accordion model.
Maybe there's more time you need to wind down. Yeah, absolutely. So I do wonder though, I, cause I feel like I'll get this question. Do you have any recommendations for what are some of those ways to tap the breaks leading up to that stop sign throughout the course of the day that maybe you often recommend or often find to be valuable that you might share.
Yeah. So here's, here's my tip. Two tips. Okay. One is instead of a, you know, a lot of people use alarms of when to wake up in the morning and interrupting sleep and we're like, well, I don't care. What, what sort of stage you're sleeping in? You gotta get up now because. For a reason, cuz you gotta get ready.
You gotta go. There's stuff you need to do. I think we need to treat, sleep as our commute to tomorrow where like, if we had to leave the house, we wouldn't say, well, you know, I'll stop doing stuff when I, when I'm done and I'll, I'll do take care of everything I can, I can think of to do. And then I'll leave the house and well, let's see how, how fast I need to race to get.
There's only a little bit of leeway. You can give yourself there. There's only a little bit of wiggle room and we don't do that because if we're late, we have problems, but that's how we should think about sleep. You know, when I, when I go to bed, I think, all right, what time do I need to be up tomorrow?
How much sleep do I need to get to be optimally functional based on how much I gotta do tomorrow? When do I need to get to bed in order to be able to get to sleep at the time that I need to? And when do I need to put down the laptop? Or turn off whatever, to be able to have enough mental space so that when I get into bed, I'm ready to go to sleep.
And then I think count backwards, just like a commute. When do I have to get up in order to shower and get breakfast and get everything ready and get the kids stuff ready to be able to get out the door on time. It's the same sort of thinking backwards process in terms of some of those specifics. So the first thing I would do is set that bedtime alarm set a timer in, in the evening of like, this is when whatever you're doing.
Like now's the time to power down those large electronic devices. You know, like now we're gonna, we're gonna be, we're gonna be, we're gonna be landing soon and you prepare for it. Maybe that's when you need to set your alarm for it. Maybe you'll get to the point where you'll go to a better reasonable time.
You'll wake up naturally. You won't need an alarm in the morning, but you'll need the alarm earlier to get yourself ready for that. So that's the one is the alarm. The other one is sort of a gauge to know if what I'm doing is too distract. Here's my little self test of is what I'm doing too distracting.
I asked myself if an alarm went off right now and said, it's time to put this down, would I fight it? Would I say no, no, no, no, no. I can't. That means whatever I'm doing is too mentally engaging for being close to bedtime. Oh no. Like half of our smartphone use or Netflix use uhoh well, so, so this is where, like, if I'm watching a show and I ask myself this question, I'll be like, but I wanna see what's next.
And then, and then, you know, just personally, what I tell myself is. The show will be there tomorrow. It doesn't care whether I watch it or not. My life will not be negatively impacting by not knowing the thing that was written and scripted and filmed months ago that I just so happen to be watching. Now I can equally watch it tomorrow.
It doesn't actually give me anything to watch it now versus tomorrow. It doesn't care. Nobody cares. I'm only, I only care right now because I'm in it, but it's a show it's not real. It's not like something that's really happening. It's there tomorrow. Yeah. So I like to just, I just remind myself of, of that and be like, why am I all worked up about this?
I don't need to be worked up about this. It doesn't help anything. It's not helpful to be worked up about this. But yeah. Then that whole idea, that self check of, if I would fight putting this down, Whatever it is, it means it's so distracting and mentally engaging. You're not processing what you need to process.
You're distracting yourself, but you are so distracted all day. And then we distract ourselves at night and we don't really have time with ourselves. That's what I would say. So good. Well, thank you for indulging us in that because , it really is so helpful to help navigate this big topic of sleep. And one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this is not necessarily just from a fixation on sleep itself, but from the exact process that you're speaking to, it has us ironically be awake behind the wheel of our lives.
And. Structuring our days in a way that helps us check in consistently, cuz if you're gonna really nail this consistently night after night, largely it does take some intervention and sometimes course correction and shifts and changes. I know when I connected with you at one point at sleep, 2022, you were speaking to some of the ways that you work with athletes in their wild schedules and jet lag and all the things.
So absolutely, you know, it takes this awareness and check in that. Is something to be relished of what we can get out of this process, which also leads me to the second category of individuals that we often see coming our way that are looking to optimize. They might have a whoop bios strap or a ring, apple watch, muse headbands, dream headman, et cetera.
And they say, I'm getting these scores, these stats, these numbers, I wanna improve these numbers. You are someone that has been in this space for decades. And can you help us sift through what makes sense to look at and what. Okay. First thing I wanna say is yes, with all of these devices. When I was an undergraduate college student at the University of Rochester working in the sleep lab, and my first mentor was Michael Perlis and he, you know, one of the great teachers in the field, I was very lucky that I stumbled into that lab.
Amazing. One of the things he used to say is the first three rules of science are know your measures, know your measures and know your measures because a lot of times we get a number. We don't know what that number means. Yeah. We don't know what's behind it. What are we actually measuring here? And I think back on that all the time, but in looking at wearables, cuz you get these numbers that, that are measuring something, but what are you actually measuring?
Cuz you're trying to make decisions based on these numbers, but what are you actually measuring here? So let me just really briefly break down what these numbers actually are. Almost all these devices have at least a movement measurement. The way they measure movement is through. Accelerometry what it means.
The, in a nutshell, what accelerometry is, is as you move a little thing in the little chip presses against, as it moves through space, it's, you know, there's inertia and you have things that compress each other and move and the degree to which they're moving against each. Get changes, electrical voltage, and it's, it's creating an output of voltage.
And then what happens is that output is like, is it a lot of movement? Is it a little movement? Is it one big solid movement or is it more continuous? And then what they do is they process that signal and they use that to determine, okay, Based on what this movement was in this, this recording window of a few seconds or a minute or whatever, compared to what it was just doing and what it's gonna be doing later.
You know, cuz you're scoring this retroactively, did this unit of measure did this minute, was this probably a wake sort of a movement or sleep sort of a movement. And so then they get this resolution this one minute re. That's been done since the first paper to do that, scientifically in the lab came out in 1972 by the mid 1980s.
The technology of using movement to measure sleep already had like 80 to 90% accuracy relative sort of to in lab brain wave activity, which it's never really gotten too far above because you're measur again. You're measuring apples and oranges. Yeah. You're measuring oranges and lemons. Like they're both fruit.
They're kind of both citrus. No, one's gonna mistake the flavor of one for the other, even though they're they're, they're actually, they are very similar and that's the thing with the brainwave sleep and the movement based sleep. It's not that one is correct. And one's incorrect. You're measuring where sleep is, is deep in the brain.
We can't measure that directly. So we use brainwave activity on the outside of the brain, or we use movement activity to tell if someone's awake or asleep. Those are the best measurements we have that are objective without just asking. Sleep wake measurement minute to. Using anything that has a good movement sensor, especially one that's been tested and validated in a lab.
And you'd be surprised how many on the market really haven't, which is really frustrating. Yeah. Some of them have and proven themselves to work pretty well. They usually have around, you know, 90 ish percent accuracy, minute to minute compared to like the brainwave recordings of sleep versus wake pretty good.
It's been that way for decades. Actually that technology, it gets refined, but it mostly gets refined by being smaller. That's sort of the best there is 90 percent's all right. But in eight hours, 480 minutes, that means 48 minutes that are not the same. And usually because it's measuring it based on movement, it's not based on your memory.
For example, it will record lots of small awakenings that potentially happen during the night that you don't remember. That's okay. Because you're not gonna remember them. Do they functionally matter? That's a controversy in the field right now. Mm-hmm um, it'll probably capture all the awakenings. You do remember if it doesn't something wrong with that device and if you there's something wrong with your sleep, the more disturbed your sleep is artificially.
Like if you're in a lot of pain or if you have an untreated sleep apnea or a movement disorder or something, it's gonna be more inaccurate because what it's measuring is movements during the night that look like. But if your movements during the night during sleep, don't look like sleep because you're artificially moving a lot, cuz you're in pain or if you have insomnia and you're systematically looking like you're asleep, but you are actually conscious, the devices are gonna be slightly more inaccurate because what are the assumptions in those measurements?
But in general, the sleep weight measurement is probably the most reliable cause the technology's been around forever and is tested. Yeah. Then you get into the heart rate. So the way they measure heart rate is a thing called photo plus homography. And that's just a fancy way of saying, so you see the little lights that are shining.
Sure. What they do is they shine a laser through your skin and it hits a blood vessel and bounces back and gets red and it's, and it's sending it so many times a second that it's recording the bounce back. And as your blood vessels expand and contract, as the pulse is going through, it's gonna change the reflect.
So that's all, that's how it's measuring. It's measuring the reflectivity of the light. And so if you measure it enough times per second, what you can get is a measure of expand contract, expand contract, and the way the heart is, it's a sharp expand and a slow contract, sharp expand, slow contract, that sharp expand that peak, that peak to peak interval of, of each time it measures.
Is almost identical to what the electrical rhythm of your heart is because it makes sense. Cause that's when the blood's pumping out. So that's how it's measuring heart rate. Now, again, there are things that can throw that measurement dot what can block a laser from hitting your blood vessels? Well, different things on your skin.
So skin color can change it because it can change the, the transmission of the light tattoos can change it. How much fat is in your skin and how much other, how thick your skin is, or, or how thick the layers are. There can change how reflective it is and how it's recorded. So it might make it more or less inaccurate as you vary from whoever that sensor was developed and mean done.
The other thing is, so what does that have to do with sleep actually? The data show that heart rate alone can't really tell you very well if someone's awake or asleep, but when you combine that heart rate with the movement data, You get a pretty good window into sleep stages in the brain, which is a, you know, it's a whole other rabbit hole to go down.
Yes. Go down through. Cause with the movement data, you cannot get sleep stages. People have been trying for decades, you can get sleep versus wake and that's pretty much it. You can't get light sleep versus deep sleep. If you have movement alone, any device is telling you they can do it. They probably have no idea what they're talking.
With the heart rate data, you can, you can't get all the sleep stages, but you can sort of differentiate the deep sleep versus the light sleep versus re and that's because the combination of movement and heart rate are functionally different in those different stages and the accuracy they get there is.
Between 50 and 80%, depending on the person, depending on the night, depending on the stage. So on the one hand, if I looked at a record from a device that I knew was pretty good, or at least that has been tested, what I would say is we know that, you know, Your sleep. Is this what my sleep was? I said, this is what your, this is probably a ballpark close to what your sleep was.
Well, what if I only got 19 minutes of deep sleep? I'll say, well, the device measured about 19 minutes, but there's a big margin of error. There. There's so much of a margin of error that. I actually don't care about one night's worth of data in that regard and plus sleep stages in the real world, they might fluctuate a lot over time and we don't really know cause we only really measured them in the lab until these devices came out about 10 years ago.
So we don't even know what to make sense of sleep stages in the real world. Anyway, I mean, but it might give you a sense that something's up. If you're worried about anything. Get checked out for, if you have a sleep disorder, get it treated. If you don't have a sleep disorder, there's probably not much that can be done about it.
I mean, can you increase your deep sleep artificial? Not really. I mean, there are some things that could potentially do it, but it changes with age anyway. And you know, what is its function in a real world setting it's still kind of controversial. So I wouldn't worry too much about sleep staging data.
Yeah. Except to the degree it tells you. Did my sleep look pretty solid with, with, with normal looking transitions or did it look very broken up or did it look super light all night or something like that? Just like the overall patterns. And then you get into all these metrics that these devices have that are neither of those things.
So again, that's gonna be 50 to 80% accuracy depending on the person, depending on the night, it will not replace a steep lab. Don't ride, ride those data into the sunset. They're just ballpark, but they're not nothing. They're both. Then you get like these recovery metrics and need things and like, are you getting as much as you need?
Or how recovered are you and all this stuff. That's even, that's getting more into the wishful thinking sort of territory where there's, there's a little science that this is based on. It's not totally made up, but it is not well tested or validated. It's all like with an asterisk next to it of this could mean nothing or it could be super useful.
Take it as you will, don't make any life changes based on those information. But if it helps you. Motivate or something, you know, that's fine. I don't know. Does that make sense? Yeah. And when you say that last part, would you put that in the category of, so a lot of the people that come our way, they're looking at things like really interested in HR V really interested in say blood oxygen, readouts.
Respiratory rate bodily temperature, particularly for women with their INFR rhythm. Yeah. And other things. Would you put that all in that similar category? Yeah. Yeah. I would put it all the category of big old asterisks next to it, of whatever this number is. Imagine a relatively wide margin of error in the precision of how reliable that number is.
Sure. And if that means it's kind of useless to you. Welcome to my world. if that number becomes useful, even with that margin of error, you can see it move. Like if you see it move reliably, that's useful. Okay. Yeah. Or if you see the number change and that change is associated with the difference in how you feel, that makes it useful.
And so like the things like the blood oxygen. Yeah. I mean, if you ha there, there are good, oh, two sensors. Yep. But what does, but normal? Oh, two fluctuates during the night. Anyway. Especially as we get older, like, is it a problem? It's like, well, if you have sleep acne, it's a problem. Only because you get repeatedly hypoxic and your cells get all stressed out.
But if your O two dips a little bit during the night, That's normal that doesn't really do. That's not really a problem. And then can you optimize that again? A lot of these sort of things are mostly made up. They're it's all proof of concept. It's all. Well, assuming that this is measuring what we think it is, and assuming that this changes the way we would expect it to change when things change and assuming that.
This change reflects the underlying physiology that I think is happening. If I get this change, it might reflect this underlying physi, but you've just built this assumption on a house of cards. Mm-hmm and as a scientist, this is my problem with some of these metrics. It's that I'm actually totally fine using them.
Knowing that they're fuzzy metrics, but trying to read too much into it. I mean, you've got a fuzzy picture. You can't it's it's like the, the, the joke on the, on the crime shows of like enhance the blurry picture. It's like, you can enhance it as much as you want. You can't create information that was never there.
Yeah. No. And at best it's a blurry picture and it's okay. A blurry picture. That's true. Can be super useful. Just don't make it something that it. Absolutely. I think it's really well said. Cause there's certain what feels like helpful information for certain people. When, so for instance, they'll see pretty reliably they drink alcohol, their HR V goes down they're right at a high elevation, a high altitude.
Their HR V goes down during that period. Certain things that they begin to correlate and expect, and they can plan around and make informed decisions. Exactly. And, but not losing your mind when right. Cuddling for a little stretch of time, your heart, rate's a little up your HIV's a little down, respiratory's a little fun, like not, uh, making too much out of what we don't quite know.
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And then the one other thing that's important is that these are measurement tools. Sure. They're measurement tools that give you a number. They're not sleep improvement programs. Yeah. Like the metaphor, you know, I, I always use is, is a bathroom scale is not a weight loss program.
Yeah. And it gives you information and sometimes the information can be useful to make decisions on, but it's just measurement. What you do with that information is up to you. And this is my consistent frustration that a lot of these companies build themselves as selling improvement. With knowledge. And I think, I think it's kind of arrogant to say, I don't mean the companies are arrogant.
I think there's a lot of people in my world and in, in the sort of educated world that builds things that says, if you only knew what I knew you would make good choices. Yeah. And it's like, that really takes human nature out of the equation. It all takes the complications of life. It. Well, if everyone knew that smoking was bad for you, nobody would ever smoke well.
If everyone knew that vegetables were good for you, everyone would eat five to seven servings of vegetables every day and they'd have no problems. Well, why do we still have this problem? It's not because nobody know that people still don't know smoking is bad for you or that vegetables are good for you.
So life is complicated. And just because this device like might tell you some information doesn't necessarily mean, you know, how to use that information or make the best of it. And many of those people are listening. I would say, reach out like there's a whole field of behavioral scientists. Yeah. Who understand how behavioral change works.
And it's more complicated than just telling people to do things. Cause like telling no one likes being told what to do. Yeah. I mean, if we've learned anything during this pandemic, we've learned that people just don't like to be told what to. And even if it's the right thing to do. And even if you give them all the information in the world, sometimes it's not enough.
And I think for people who are using these devices to improve their. And they get frustrated. Don't get too frustrated, know that that's not really what they're designed for, but there are other things out there that you could potentially do. And there's behavioral sleep. People like me, who, who can know what to do with this information can help people improve their sleep.
Hopefully will get more of these sort of resources out there. There's there's yeah. You know, more books, more, more stuff for people who don't necessarily have sleep disorders, but we're getting absolutely. Great. Well, and I know, uh, at sleep 2022, you spoke to some opportunities for people to develop upon some kind of stagnant behavioral change models for sleep specifically that could use some kind of a upgrading.
What was the year? 1960s I'm yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so the, yeah, at that talk, I was talking about a thing called the health belief model. It came out in the sixties and it's still, it's still useful today, essentially. The whole point of the health belief model. And I apologize to all of the health behavior scientists listening.
If I, if I'm, if I'm butchering your view of the health belief model. But my view of the health belief model is that there are six ingredients that are required for someone to make a healthy behavior change. One of them is they need to perceive that they're at risk, that that there's, that there's something wrong with what they're doing.
If they feel like everything they're doing is fine. They're not gonna change anything. Right. Number two, they have to perceive that that risk actually will produce a negative outcome. That, okay. Yeah, fine. I don't eat the way I should, but lots of people don't eat the way they should and live long happy lives.
So who cares? Right. So they have to perceive that the risk matters. Then they have to perceive changing would produce a benefit. Cause yeah, I could change the way I eat, but at the end of the day, at my age, there's nothing else you can. Well, they're not gonna change. They have to perceive that there's gonna be a benefit and they have to perceive.
That then you have to remove the barriers to being able to do it. So not only is making the change gonna be beneficial. And I know making this change is gonna be beneficial, but I can't because, yeah. And so, and so you have to remove the barriers and this is, and actually it's the barriers where I think we get stuck cuz we, you know, the other one is, yeah, we're great at educating people on the perceived risk and the possible risks and the potential benefits of change.
But. But how do you, how do I work this into my life? How do I actually make this happen? And this is where some of the tips and stuff come in to try and remove some of those barriers and sometimes just creates more barriers. So, I mean, that's four of the six, the two other ones. One is cues to action. We need reminders.
We need, yeah, we need guides. We can't just do thi humans are just really bad at, at telling us something once and then running with it forever. Some of us are good at that. Most of us are done. Yeah. Especially when it's something that's hard to do, we need support. And then the sixth one is self. Where it's a, it's a psychological concept that even if I know in my mind that doing this is possible, if I don't feel like it's possible for me.
Yeah, I'm gonna give up. I'm not gonna try. And self-efficacy is another place where I think we really need to focus more because the whole, you can do it and helping teach people how they can do it and help people feel within themselves that they can do it. So those are these six ingredients and the health belief model saying that, look, if you don't believe all six of these things, then if one of them fail.
The house of cards comes tumbling down. And, and I think everyone, listen, can think of a time in their life when there was a thing that they were supposed to do that they kind of should have done. Yeah. But they kind of didn't and I bet one of those six ingredients was where it fell apart. Absolutely.
Yeah. Well, and from that place from someone that's so informed by that model, often what we get is people wanna know, okay, how is this person using this information into their own life? So I'd be super curious for, we asked four questions of everyone. It used to be three it's it's expanded now it's four.
And so. From all of that information. My first question for you would be, what would we see on with your nightly sleep routine, being informed by all those models and, uh, those kind of points and your decades of research. How are you managing that right now? So I know I talked about a little this earlier, but my nighttime routine is all informed.
When do I need to get to bed? When do I need to be ready to get to bed? Yeah. In order to get to sleep at the time I need to, it's not how much left do I have to do, because there's always more to do. I'm still like my nightly routine after the kids are in bed. Like many people were on the couch with laptops open and, you know, TV's sort of on the background.
Sometimes I'm watching the TV more than the computer, sometimes the other way around. And then at some. About maybe an hour or so before I'm going to bed. I need to put the computer down because I need that time to not be focused on work stuff. I might still look at emails on my phone. I might still scroll something on my phone, but never anything that I couldn't put down.
And then maybe about 15, 20 minutes beforehand. And again, I'm good at sort of just, you know, disengaging, I've gotten better over the years, but like I'll, I'm much quicker to turn off the TV. I don't really watch it at night anyway. I'm not. TV person at night. Yeah. And like, I don't really care that much.
And so having it on the background doesn't bother me too much. I'm totally happy to just turn it off. Then I'll go into my room, do all the nighttime stuff. I'll get into bed. If I feel like. There's something I can't quite let go of. And I need to like check someone more thing on my phone, or if I'm checking my calendar the next day or whatever, I won't do that in bed.
I try and plug everything, not next to me. And then things get plugged in lights, go off. I go into bed, close my eyes. And I usually fall asleep pretty quickly. Um, because I don't go to bed till I'm ready. Like it's normal. I think my routine is. Super weird compared to what other people do. It's more about the mindset.
It's more about the, I know what I'm being mindful of what I'm doing. And I know when the right time to put things down for me. And, and I know that if I get too involved into something too late, so what I need to tell myself. So I told you what I told myself with, with shows and stuff. If I'm watching and I get into it.
So for work, what I, the thing I tell myself is I need to give myself permission to. Because if I don't and I keep going the quality of my work, not only won't be good anymore, but it will be worse all of tomorrow. Yes. And I can't afford that. I actually, it's a better investment to just stop now and whatever I don't get done.
I have to give myself permission to push it to tomorrow because there's no way to finish it all. And that's what I, so it's setting those boundaries and, and learning within myself, what I actually need to be ready. And the proof would be. You know, get into bed. I actually fall asleep pretty quickly. Not too quickly.
That's another thing. Yes. If you're, if you're asleep before your head hits the pillow, it means it's like, it's like saying I use all these food metaphors cause sleep and food are so similar. It's like I put a plate of food in front of you and it's cleared out in like 15 seconds. It means you were too hungry.
Yeah. So like, yeah, it should take a few minutes, but it shouldn't take super long. Such a that's my nice distinction. Thank you for that. That's fantastic. And we've recently added in what's your morning routine with the thinking that that can help support our sleep and curious yeah. How you're relating to that?
My morning routine, like during most of the year, my morning routine is I actually have an alarm at six 30, so I have to get the kids ready to get to school. And, and I do bus drop off in the morning and school drop off and I have the rounds that I run in the morning. Gotta be. So my morning routine is I have an alarm, but I usually don't need it.
I'm usually up, especially, you know, especially in Arizona, when the sun comes up early, like I'm pretty like sensitive. So I wake up early enough that I usually don't need, I hate alarms. I, I have the alarm as the backstop, if I don't wa if, if I wake up within a half an hour of when the alarm's gonna go off and she.
Because also, I know it takes a couple minutes to fall back asleep. That last 20 minutes of sleep is probably gonna be shallow and stressed because I know an alarm is coming. Just get out, I'll be fine and get them ready, get them out. And then, you know, do my stuff. And then, you know, start work. I think having a regular time that you're awake is important for two reasons.
One time starts becoming a queue and it starts. Getting you ready to get moving quicker and, and getting out of bed as soon as you're, that's another thing I don't linger in bed in the morning. Yeah. Within if I'm in bed for more than five minutes in the morning before actually getting up, it, it means I'm taking a long time for some reason.
That's the other thing by getting up right away. It, it doesn't pro it's good stimulus control. It helps make it so that when I'm up, I wanna get up. The other thing is having that regular time helps set the. because just like we have a certain number of hours, our body wants to wake between meals. We have a certain number of hours for sleep.
We, we, we wanna be able to sleep around 16 hours after we wake up. And if we have a regular wake up time, it starts programming in ahead of time where the bedtime is going to want to be reliably. Yeah. And once it stops becoming a moving target, if wake up is a moving target, bedtime becomes a moving target.
If wake up becomes reliable. Bedtime starts becoming predictable. And so that helps you wind down faster too. Mic drop. Yes. Yeah. Yes. It's all about. So like, you know, it's, it's all about predict. And when you make like anyone with kids notice when you build them a routine and you make aspects of their lives predictable, it allows all the other things free reign.
Sure. But when thing, when basic stuff becomes unpredictable, that's where the stress becomes. And then you can't be creative. You can't, you don't have the mental space to do these other things because you're too busy worrying about the foundations. Mm, yes. A hundred percent. That's so well said. Well, uh, speaking of foundations, the foundation of around.
Face your nightstand Orial nightstand. Uh, is there anything we would see in your physical environment that might be important to note? The only things I have on my bedstand, I have, um, a little echo show on the nightstand for as a, as a clock cut because I have it so that the screen is very dim at night.
Yep. But then you can sort of see it during the. But like, if I needed to set an alarm or if I, you know, something like that, it's right there. Of course with the camera turned off. And then the only other thing I have on my nightstand, I actually do have a charger for my phone. Everything else is in the other room, but there, I used to have my phone plugged in, in another room.
Yeah. And then there were a couple of emergencies I missed. And so like, cause I have it set where there's certain numbers that will ring through for like yes. You know, if there's, if. Patients or research subjects. Like I, I need to be on call sometimes. And once there, there was, by the second time I missed an important call that I should have gotten.
That was an emergency. I'm like, okay, fine. I guess I'm gonna have to have this here, but I don't touch it during that. I don't check it when I wake up. That's actually why I have the, the clock there. So I don't check my phone. I look to see what time it is there. And cuz once the phone is in your hand, you know, you're very tempted to do something else with it.
Absolutely. Ugh, good call out with that. I had something similar happen. I used to do airplane mode to really make it off, off. And then also after some emergencies and what have you, I did kind of begrudgingly, it was such a nice feeling to be like that is just gone, but I absolutely get that. Okay. And then the last question, be really curious your answer.
What has made the biggest change to your personal kind of sleep game or the biggest sleep aha moment in your own. So when I was in college, I was one of those people who was up till all hours of the night, like morning classes were the worst. Yes. And were the hardest, especially cuz I was in Rochester where you didn't see the sun for like six months of the year.
Oh I went to Syracuse. Totally get that. Yes. Oh. So you know exactly what I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. Okay. Yes. So, so yeah. So the two things that changed my life in terms of sleep, they're actually things I already said. So one is number one was actually stimulus. And training myself so that when I got into bed, I would be sleeping.
Cause when you're in college, your bed's also your couch. It's also your office. It's also like it's also the place where you're hanging out. Like, and it just, it's just terrible stimulus control and it made sleep much more shallow and UN and unreliable. But one, if I wanted to go to bed earlier, I couldn't.
And the other thing was light. This I didn't discover until I went to grad school where went going from Rochester, new. To San Diego, all of a sudden I got sunlight and it made such knowing that light, that that's where I really learned that light exposure during the day, especially the morning. It does so much for my sleep at night.
And since then in the last year, since then, there's been a lot of data coming out around that, that, that like actually daytime light has a lot to do with nighttime sleep. Yeah. Mean, if you wanna knock your light, people are worried about not light from screens. You wanna, you can get all the light you want.
If you get enough bright light during the day sets your rhythm strong enough that even light at night won't have that much of an impact. Yeah. Like you can like light during the day is actually a big deal. So those are the two big things. Oh, a hundred. I love that you ended with that one because, um, We actually started this podcast with, um, Dr.
Jamie Zeitz speaking to the power of, uh, circadian health. I know you just recently. He's so cool. He's amazing. Yeah. And I know you just recently spoke to your proclamations that I completely agree with that circadian health will be just so critical in the future. And a hundred percent, I have literally set up my life around.
I'm not saying everyone needs to do this, but, uh, I, I really designed where I just moved to Austin, Texas. And part of that choice was seeing better. At our sunshine, I grew up in Maine, went to school in Syracuse, lived in Manhattan for a bunch of years. Like I absolutely get and nothing against these places on the globe, but there is a reality that there's a health geography component to our choices that we make.
And so if we can have that flexibility, I really do think it's important to at least be informed by that. So if you are in those Northern, uh, latitude locations, then knowing that there might be D. Steps that you'll be taking to get your light artificial light. You can use artificial light as well. Yes.
And, and that was what I, when I, when I lived in New York and, and then, you know, then moved back to Philly for a bunch of years before coming back here to Arizona. And when I was there, like I, I made use of the artificial light that I could at the right time. So yeah. There's things you can do. Things you can do.
Absolutely. Did we miss anything, uh, that you wanna say in this? I know there's a lot to say, but anything, but, you know, there's, there's always more to say. I, I think that the only thing I wanna say is I'm just really grateful for everybody listening that, that. Sleep is part of our, the foundations of our biology.
It's not a coincidence that we all sleep. Yeah. But we live in a society that kind of sees sleep as unproductive time. Yeah. And because of that, we have all these pressures to sort of devalue sleep. And I just remember like being a grad student in the postdoc and being a, in the sleep science world, we would always talk about like, man, if people only knew how important this was and all the benefits you could actually get out of.
It could really make a difference. It's like too bad. That's never gonna happen. Like we just, our society's never gonna allow for that, but now the conversation's really changing and it's because of people like you and because of people who are like listening and taking this stuff seriously, I mean, it's like, to me, this is.
A whole bunch of people are finding the thing that, that you find really interesting and love and find value in. They find value in it too. So I'm just really grateful that other people are out there saying, you know what, maybe sleep is important and maybe I should do something about it and maybe it'll help.
So I, I just wanna say thank you. Oh, well, I wanna absolutely echo that. I have such immense gratitude for all the work that you've done. Certainly I was just at sleep 20, 22, uh, with you. I mentioned that and just astounded by the amount of information that there is for us to continue to unpack. And then also how much we still don't know so many question marks, but the interest and the conversations, I think like all behavioral change beginning.
Dust this, getting this out is so important. And for someone like yourself taking the time to really go in deeper and help set the record straight on certain areas, help us bridge the gap so that more people can be connected to qualified individuals, to help guide them really, really, really important. So thank you.
Thank you. And I also wanna say, I'm sure people listening are gonna wanna. Connect more with you see more of your research, what you're doing. So what is the best way for them to do that? So my website is just by name Michael grandner.com. I'm easily Googleable. You can find me on Twitter. I post a lot there.
Um, I'm pretty active. Um, haven't figured out Instagram yet. Maybe I'm too old. I don't know. And, uh, you know, and you could also, like I said, I'm findable. If someone has a random question, if you shoot me an email, I'll respond. Yeah. I'm, you know, again, this is the thing that I love doing more than anything else.
And if I can, this is the one thing I can, one way I can. So if I can help, you know, I, I always, you know, have, have the motivation and do as much good as I can for as many people as I can with what I got. So if I could be helpful, yeah. Feel free to shoot, shoot a random email. I mean, I don't, if, if I can, if someone says, Hey, I live in this city, I don't know.
My doctor doesn't know anybody, but I'm struggling with this. How do I find somebody? Like I can help, but yeah. Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website. If you, you know, You can see me on other podcasts and stuff. I, I like talking about this stuff, so fantastic. Well, thank you again, uh, means a ton and I am really excited to continue to follow your work.
And it's so cool that you're in Arizona, right near I shared my, my dad lives right in your, um, home city and excited to follow more of what you've got going on and all the research that you are in the midst of, and the education that you're putting out for all of us. So really appreciate it. Awesome.
Thank you so much. And thank you to everybody. You've been listening to the sleep is a skill podcast. The number one podcast for people who wanna take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday, I send out something that I call Molly's Monday, obsessions, continuing everything that I'm obsessing over in the world of sleep head on over to sleep is a skill.com to sign up.